Lalmonirhat

Back to Rangpur after five nights away in Lalmonirhat. We stayed at the charming guesthouse which is rumoured to be closing soon :( A sad day. Whether it closes or not I was sad to find out that Rita, my favourite cook (and sister, as she refers to us) is retiring in 2 months. Rita is one of the most memorable people from my first trip to Bangladesh. It was she who took Teryl and I under her wing and was so excitd when we showed up for dinner one night with our Bangali makeovers. It is sad to think that next years group won't get to meet her. But on the bright side I did get her mailing address (wouldn't it be fun to test the Bangali post system) and her sons e-mail address, so hopefully we'll be able to stay in touch.


At this point in the trip it is always difficult in terms of our programming. Due to our jam packed schedule in Thakurgaon a lot of our field visits in Lalmonirhat are repeats of programs that we have already seen. Nevertheless it still amazes me how I learn something new at every visit. Whether it be something new about the RDRS program, the particular group or the people themselves, it always catches me off guard. This place never stops amazing me.


We did get a chance to have some unique experiences this week! Lalmonirhat is the HQ for the Community Health Programme run by RDRS and in the same compound they run an eye clinic. Along with the eye clinic is a school for the visually impared. The school houses 50 students who are all blind or low vision. The school gives them the opportunity to study in the classroom and also learn skills for income generating activities. We were able to sit in on one of their classes and the children demonstrated some of the skills they were learning. They showed us how to read and write braille, how they could do math using an abacus and another piece of quesipment that I can't remember the name of! They also showed off their musical talents on the harmonium, drums and flute, which were spectacular. We then had a chance to see some of the income generating activities that they were being taught such as bicycle repair, fish culture, bamboo weaving and many others. Each student is taugh three different trades in order to help them sustain themselves once they leave school. All of the students are simply amazing. It is crazy to think that only a few years ago they would have been nothing more than a burden to their families, and now they are contributing members. Some of the students that we met had even gone on to college and were working on degrees in political science.

Along the same lines of community health, we visited a government hospital where RDRS is running a TB and leprosy clinic. Leprosy has technically been eliminated in Bangladesh since 2005, but they still experience around 1 case per 10 000 people. After visiting the clinic and seeing their treatment plans we visited the homestead of one of the patients who had been helped by the leprosy clinic. We walked to their home and the first thing I noticed was that the man's hands and feet were badly disfigured with several fingers missing completely. His wife joined us and it turns out that they had both contracted leporsy. Her disfigurement was strictly in her feet but it was quite severe. One of her feet had no toes at all. We learned that because of the late detection the disfigurement was too far along to do anything about. We spoke with this man for a while about his story through the interpreters, but it caught me off guard when the man himself began speaking in English. He told us that he had lost his livelihood, that he had no way of earning for his family. He had been a school teacher and now was unable to work due to his condition. The words straight from his mouth had such an impact;
I am in constant pain and tired all of the time.
For a husband and wife to no longer have the means to support their children. It was devastating.
Just after our talk his wife lead us into their homestead to show us the cow and the bull that RDRS had given them as a means of generating income. Turns out that the cow was out grazing but the bull was in it's place. This bull, with all of it's horns, dripped his head and snorted at us in a threatening way. The man came up behind us and told us "He doesn't like new people." in a joking manner. The man, his wife and the whole village, who had come to see the Badeshi's (foreigners) in town, began to laugh and continue to joke as we all laughed along nervously. This moment, in it's simplest form, is my favorite part of Bangladesh. The people, now matter what situations they are facing, are resiliant, happy, full of life and most of all supportive of their community and their family.

On the Monday we had the opportunity to travel to an antenatal clinic in one of the Bangali enclaves in India. We were joined by another woman, named Suzzane, who is completing her masters at UC Berkley and is here conducting some research. She had been in Bangladesh for less than a week, so was quite new to the whole thing, and it was nice to have a new member of our group to talk with for a while. She was exteremely interesting, having lived in Tanzania twice for two months each and she spoke fluent Swahili. Our drive to and from the enclave was quite long so it was nice to have someone new to gab with and share all of our wealth of Bangali knowledge with.

We also got to do some sight seeing this week! Lalmonirhad district boarder India (as you may have guessed when I talked about the enclaves) and we got the chance to visit one of the boarder crossings at which there is a 'no mans land' between the two contries. The no mans land is a quarter of a mile streatch that doesn't belong to either India or Bangladesh. We were able to take a walk right up to the Indian boarder and actually spend about give minutes chilling out in India (: So yes, I have officially visited India now!
Another trip we made was to a giant dam that is built across one of the larger rivers that flows in to Bangladesh from India. Bangladesh and their countryside are largely influenced by the Indian dams and whether they are opened or closed, so they built their own to try to minimize the damaged caused. The dam is quite long and we were able to walk about halfway across it and there we found the most curious thing. We walked up to some men who seemed to be fishing with a large net. Fishing for fish.. or so we thought. Turns out the men were fishing for watermellon! We looked down in the swirling waters under the dam and saw that there were watermellons floating in the water. It turns out that these were Indian watermellon that had somehow ended up in the river and the Bangali men had simply learned how to profit (: So resourceful.

And that about sums up our trip to Lalmonirhat. There are many more stories of course, but if I don't stop myself now I never will. We are off tomorrow to our last field visit (I can't believe it's already here) to the chars. The chars are always an interesting stay because even through we experience rolling blackouts everywhere else it doesn't compare to the total lack of power we will see on the chars. We spend three nights on the chars, one back in Kurigram, two nights here in Rangpur, a few days in Dhaka and then we are on our way out of Bangladesh. When it's broken down like that it seems like it will go by in an instant. So here we go! Wish us luck.